Tyrant

did not originally mean a despot, but an absolute prince, and
especially one who made himself absolute in a free state. Napoleon III.
would have been so called by the ancient Greeks. Many of the Greek
tyrants were pattern rulers, as Pisistratos and Pericles, of Athens;
Periander, of Corinth; Dionysios the Younger, Gelon, and his brother
Hiero, of Syracuse; Polycrates, of Samos; Phidion, of Argos, etc. etc.
(Greek, turannos, an absolute king, like the Czar of Russia.)

Tyrant of the Chersonese.

Miltiade was so called, and yet was he, as Byron says, “Freedom's
best and bravest friend.” (See Thirty Tyrants.)

A tyrant's vein.

A ranting, bullying manner. In the old moralities the tyrants were
made to rant, and the loudness of their rant was proportionate to the
villainy of their dispositions. Hence to out-Herod Herod is to rant
more loudly than Herod; to o'erdo Termagant is to rant more loudly than
Termagant. (See Pilate, Voice.)